Quantitative MALDI tandem mass spectrometric imaging of cocaine from brain tissue with a deuterated internal standard.

Mass spectrometric imaging (MSI) is an analytical technique used to determine the distribution of individual analytes within a given sample. A wide array of analytes and samples can be investigated by MSI, including drug distribution in rats, lipid analysis from brain tissue, protein differentiation in tumors, and plant metabolite distributions. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) is a soft ionization technique capable of desorbing and ionizing a large range of compounds, and it is the most common ionization source used in MSI.

Quantitative MALDI-MS(n) analysis of cocaine in the autopsied brain of a human cocaine user employing a wide isolation window and internal standards.

Detection of drugs in tissue typically requires extensive sample preparation in which the tissue is first homogenized, followed by drug extraction, before the extracts are finally analyzed by LC/MS. Directly analyzing drugs in intact tissue would eliminate any complications introduced by sample pretreatment. A matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization tandem mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS(n)) method as been developed for the quantification of cocaine present in postmortem brain tissue of a chronic human cocaine user.